The Application of RADARSAT-2 Quad-Polarized Data for Oil Slick Characterization

ABSTRACT Spaceborne radar data has been extensively used to monitor numerous oil spills worldwide. The radar imagery provides information on the spatial extent of the oil, but in general, there is limited information on the characteristics of the oil such as the discrimination of sheen from emulsion. The full polarimetry capabilities of RADARSAT-2 were investigated in this study using acquisitions collected over the Gulf of Mexico. In this study, the Cloude-Pottier target decomposition algorithm was used to extract polarimetric information from RADARSAT-2 quad-polarized images acquired over the Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Cloude-Pottier entropy (H) provides a measure of the amount of mixing between scattering mechanisms. For a wind-roughened ocean surface, the scattering is dominated by a single dominant scattering mechanism, namely Bragg scattering (H → 0). In the presence of an oil slick, however, the entropy increases (H → 1) which is due to the number independent scattering mechanisms...